Lost in the shake and shuffle of SXSW this week is Flatstock 16, a showcase of the best and brightest (at times, literally) in concert poster design. Sharing crawl space on the liquor-lacquered streets and floors of Austin, Tex., are several Minneapolis graphic designers hoping to become the next John Van Hamersveld.
Among locals who made the trek down I-35 — cardboard tubes slung over their shoulders, no doubt, in place of guitar straps — are Dan Ibarra and Michael Byzewski of Aesthetic Apparatus (they’ve worked for Frank Black, the Hold Steady, and The New Pornographers, among many others). Other local poster designers postering and partying in Austin are the company Burlesque of North America (Arcade Fire, Rhymesayers), Dan Black and Jessica Seamans of the collective Landland, Amy Jo Hendrickson and an artist going by the name of DWITT. Hendrickson and fellow Minneapolis poster artists Tooth and Lonny Unitus (a vintage Baltimore Colts fan, I take it) recently opened a Northeast storefront (158 13th Ave. NE) featuring limited-edition screenprinted posters and art prints, an on-site design studio and a screenprinting shop.
In 2007, Eric Drommerhausen, an MCAD grad who lives in Albert Lea, Minn., was the grand prize winner of the first Student Flatstock Contest. Presented by the American Poster Institute, Flatstock is an annual series of exhibitions featuring work by leading concert poster artists.
Couldn’t make it to Austin to oggle the latest in wall wear? No problem — check out the live Flatstock Web cam operated by the folks of gigposters.
When I first moved to the Twin Cities, 11 years ago, the Artists’ Quarter housed the only semblance of life after 5 pm in Lowertown St. Paul (I had an apartment across from the Farmers’ Market). There was no smoking ban then, and no ventilation in the basement club in the McColl Building, yet I suffered through scorched eyes and choked lungs for any chance to catch Happy Apple. The trio still plays three or four weekends a year at the AQ (it moved several years ago to the basement beneath Great Waters Brewing) to overflowing crowds of college kids and unshaven thirtysomethings with fetishes for flannel and wool caps.
I now tip you to this review in today’s New York Times of Happy Apple’s set Tuesday at Joe’s Pub, in Lower Manhattan. Ben Ratliff, the Times reviewer, is a longtime follower of the band, so I’m a little amused his piece carries the tone of an introduction to the masses. Perhaps it’s a necessity — Apple Apple has defined avant garde jazz in the Twin Cities for close to a dozen years, yet even many jazz enthusiasts only know the band by name. Waves of attention have come from New York and France, and Happy Apple would likely have a larger profile in contemporary music (jazz and otherwise) if drummer Dave King (pictured, in this shot by Walker photographer Cameron Wittig) weren’t splitting his time in The Bad Plus (and eight other projects, at last count). The Walker presented Happy Apple and The Bad Plus in a 2005 tribute concert to Ornette Coleman.
I’ve been a little frustrated with an imbalance in Happy Apple’s recent music — songs have steered away from the more bombastic roundhouses to the soft jabs of melody and balladry — but in concert, there’s no more engaging, entertaining and ferocious band around, in any genre. And any time they’re at the AQ, I make it a point to park myself at the foot of the stage.
A day after the Walker’s opening of Frida Kahlo, Twin Cities community radio station KFAI is airing a soundtrack to the exhibition on its new program, “Encuentro.” Host Gilberto Vázquez Valle is dedicating the Oct. 28 show to songs from Kahlo's life — “songs that she loved, songs that were popular in Mexico during her lifetime and songs that were part of the musical backdrop for her artistic work,” he says.
KFAI (90.3 FM in Minneapolis / 106.7-FM in St. Paul) broadcasts "Encuentro" 1 to 2:30 pm each Sunday.
The Murakami touch follows West’s “Stronger” video, which features Japanese characters superimposed on an anime-inspired, Blade Runner-esque scene. Watch the video after the jump.
In his 1995 film Telephones, artist Christian Marclay spliced together snippets of actors from Hollywood films answering phones. Apple contacted Marclay, he says, to get permission to use the concept for a new iPhone ad (above) that debuted during the Oscars.
He refused. They took the idea anyway.
“The way they dealt with the whole thing is pretty sleazy,” Marclay says. He talked to a lawyer about taking legal action over the ripoff, but was told “there’s nothing I can do about it. They have the right to get inspired.”
Contemporary art, of course, is often about appropriation and recontextualizing material, but the brazenness of Apple’s move is too bad. Still, Marclay isn’t keen on going to court.
“This culture’s so much about suing each other that if we want to have anything that’s more of an open exchange of ideas, one has to stop this mentality. I’m just honored that they thought my work was interesting enough that they felt they could just rip it off.”
The following mini-documentary on Marclay’s work included Telephones about 3:40 in.
In 2005, high school music instructor Brian Udelhofen set out to adapt some of DJ Shadow’s compositions for live performance. After working out orchestration for tracks from the 1996 album Endtroducing (Shadow’s first studio album), he enlisted the Minnetonka (MN) High School Percussion Ensemble to try it out. Here’s their (rather remarkable) May 2005 performance of The Shadow Percussion Project.
About five years ago, I started chatting with one Jon Nelson, who worked at the Walker’s front desk when not DJing for the University of Minnesota’s Radio K. He turned me onto a project that he, under the art alter-ego Escape Mechanism, was participating in: a group of audio collage artists from across North America had created a mix CD of their Negativland-style art, packaged and shrink-wrapped it, and “reverse shoplifted” (or “droplifted“) it into the bins at Sam Goody, Tower Records, and other big record stores that, out of fear of prosecution for copyright infringement, wouldn’t carry their sample-heavy work. (I owe Jon a lot; I ended up writing on the project for a Canadian magazine, and landed a three-year editorship because of it.)
Created in partnership with mnartists.org, it’s the first in a series of video profiles Olsen will create focusing on area artists. The man behind the daily videoblog Minnesota Stories, Chuck’s last Off Center appearance was an interview he did with visiting author Bruce Sterling.
Maybe I spend too much time around here, but I couldn’t help seeing Beck’s weekend performances on Saturday Night Live through a Walker lens. The song, “Clap Hands,” has a Stomp-esque percussion bit in which spiky-haired musicians at an elegant diner table keep the beat with utensils… not so different from the performance spiky-haired Joe Chvala of Minneapolis did here last year.
Then there’s the marionettes, a set of rock-band puppets jamming in rhythm with their human likenesses… not unlike last January’s Walker performance of Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30 by Dan Graham, Tony Oursler, Japanther, and Being John Malkovich puppeteer Philip Huber. (The multimedia performance, which went on to the Whitney Biennial, was a trippy puppet rock-opera about the rise and fall of fictitious ’60s rock star, Neil Sky, based on the film Wild in the Streets.)
Is it just me? Watch the performance and see what you think:
Lost in the shake and shuffle of SXSW this week is Flatstock 16, a showcase of the best and brightest (at times, literally) in concert poster design. Sharing crawl space on the liquor-lacquered streets and floors of Austin, Tex., are several Minneapolis graphic designers hoping to become the next John Van Hamersveld.
